Verist examined the dark stone in her hand like it was a viper ready to strike at any moment. She felt equal parts revulsion and curiosity as she cupped it in her palm. Without applying any force, physical or magical, the witch could tell it was suppressing mystical phenomenon just by existing. Avant had gone above and beyond in being the first to discover this material so many hundreds of years ago. In truth, she was amazed a vein of it had been found in the wild, and by their side of all things. Its special properties limited how she could study it, however, leaving her in what felt like the dark ages. Chisel in hand, she had broken a few slivers off the main chunk she now held and doused them into special chemicals to see the reactions.

In one vial it sat within acid, which was eating away at it with a steady pace. Expected, but ultimately a useless measure. There was no way to throw enough corrosive liquids at the walls of Ardmach to eat through them without taking heavy losses themselves. Getting so close to make a strategy like that viable, they might as well have just stormed the keep. At best, she could perhaps use the idea to melt a small hole in an unmonitored section and slip in a small force. That could be used to assassinate the king, perhaps a few key political figures, but it wouldn't win them the day, as well there was a time limit to such an act. No one would miss a hole in the wall of the capital for more than a couple of hours if that. All the test told her was that it followed the natural laws. Other than barring magic, the stone was stone, nothing more.

Another piece was placed in a kiln and set over high heat. Were it a typical cook stove she would expect to see nothing happening, but that was not the case for the witch's tower. No, the kiln was placed in a crude blast furnace, the flames powered by magically obtained but naturally occurring elements. The fire was perfectly natural, Verist had just cheated in how she came upon the fuel for her fire. Not that the smiths of the orc kingdom would be missing their fuel. As expected of stone, the fragment took extreme heats to melt down, far greater than common rock even, and the witch observed it had a very minimal work time. She doubted the walls of Ardmach were crafted in that way. No, as her experiments went on she came to the conclusion that the walls must have been carved into the bricks that now formed the capital's dark defenses. Which meant there had been massive veins, if not outright mountains, of this material all those centuries ago.

The other three beakers were filled with different concoctions to see if she could dispel or inhibit the stone's capabilities without destroying it outright. After hours of mixing, heating, testing, Verist came to an unfortunate conclusion. There was no subverting Ardmach's defenses magically. Those black walls needed to be smashed through, climbed over, or tunneled under. A test confirmed her theory, the rock stationed on a table across from her as Verist threw a few spells in its direction. Anything that crossed the stone itself vanished on contact, as if swallowed by some invisible maw. Just above or just below and the spell passed without any incident. Which was why Ardmach had been built so high up. Tunneling into the mountain would be no easy feat, and the siege engines atop the plateau could fire down on them with impunity. Equally, trying to go over the wall was absurd, even to her. Thus, the capital of Avant still left them with an unsolved problem. To reach the king and end the war, they had to assault that impenetrable keep.

At least, Grot seemed bent on it. Verist had written him time and again that the proper course of action was to surround Ardmach, and that was what she wrote with her reported findings this time. If their army captured the entire nation bar Ardmach, the king would be forced to surrender or be starved out as they refused him and his citizen's supplies. A protracted siege only ended one way if those inside could no longer eat. The chief-of-chiefs was not so convinced. He worried that the king would not let them capture the nation so easily, that he would use Ardmach as a strike point. His troops would mass out and attack the back of their lines if they tried to march around the capital. It was a fair point to be made, but they needn't march so close to the city as to be ambushed, simply avoiding the area until they claimed the surrounding lands before turning inward would suffice. Assuming they had the forces to do that.

The witch sighed as she whisked that letter off to the chief-of-chiefs with a thought. Her plan to rile the aristocrats to their cause had not worked as she intended, and it was a sticking point that filed her with rage to consider. In the wake of her document leaks the king had addressed his nation, her spies had told her. He placated the peasantry, sealing the nobility behind a wall of stirred patriotism. Anyone that voiced ire of the king was a traitor, and the loss of their power would be secondary to the odds the poor stormed their houses and took their lives for the newly popular king. He left the nobles outnumbered and browbeat into compliance. The best they could hope for was that some would defect when the armies were knocking at their gates, under the promise of leniency and perhaps a place in some new government. She had heard several of the upper crust within Ardmach had taken a lighter stance since the information was made public. Hearing the king was behind the assassination of several dissenters had made most of the nobility question their safety until the general population was whipped into a fervor about traitors and a great upheaval. Some of the elite had decided to stop participating in the slave trade, yet they hadn't set their own servants free, nor tried to flee the city, yet. Too much haste would draw attention. It was the best she could do to make them suspicious of their leader, and it was far less than Verist was hoping to accomplish.

“Any luck?” Red asked, stepping into the room dressed in her newly acquired mages robes, courtesy of Verist's teleportation and a quick trip to a certain clothier mayor.

“None,” the witch sighed. “The stone's properties aren't tied to any particular state or, well, anything.” She threw her hands up in surrender and grumbled. “We have to go through or around it, and Grot is insisting we take the king.”

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Red nodded. “It's the fastest way to end the war. If Avant loses their leader the whole snake falls dead.”

“He's not the only one that supports this.”

“It doesn't matter,” the kobold mage told her. “The aristocrats that support enslaving my kind will find themselves without a bastion to hide in, and the commoners will change their tune when we get someone with better interests on the throne.”

Verist shook her head. “The commoners don't care about their own well-being, they're focused on things that make them feel important. Patriotism, high callings to the military, serving the good of the kingdom. We can't placate those ideals.”

Red shrugged. “Then they can leave,” the red-scaled kobold said flatly. “If it was up to me, I'd kick all of you humes out. Go live in Rastar for all I care.” She was less vitriolic, but the mage still believed the kobolds would be better served without humans in their affairs.

“Then you abandon them to a more hateful regime that will radicalize them further,” Verist warned her. “Right now they think you belong in shackles, but after this conflict, they'll want your heads on pikes, and two wars back to back will leave us crippled.”

Red looked angry for a moment, then sighed. “You're right, yes,” she conceded, the most progress she had made on her issues in months. “I don't like it, but we don't have a lot of choices. We'll figure out how to make the commoners agree with us, at least tolerate us, for a while anyway. If only to give our kind time to grow.”

Verist smiled, “You're getting better about thinking things through.”

Red glanced at the claw she had slapped Merdon with. “Acting rashly will only cause us pain,” she said quietly. “We have to think things through before setting them in motion. That's what it means to be a mage, yes?”

The witch gave her a resolute nod. “We mages carry tremendous powers. Opening up the earth to swallow our enemies over and over leaves the ground unstable, calling forth lighting to strike from the heavens is impressive, but it can generate unnatural storms in large numbers.” That was why many mages stuck to using things that could be generated from their own bodies. Pulling from nature had a counteractive force. Crashing a wave onto your enemies on the beach sounded powerful until the tides washed out and caused a tsunami up the coastline that wiped out a village. Those with magic had to think about what to manipulate and when, because pulling at every string often broke the marionette.

Which brought Verist back to studying the red kobold before her. Red possessed an intense natural mana reserve. She had fueled a spell that normally left Verist dizzy and only felt a little winded. Such a latent power meant Red could likely summon a storm from thin air without resorting to manipulating the weather. Verist could count the number of living magicians on her fingers and toes that had such capabilities. The fools in Avant would sooner see this talent washing dishes, and she felt disgusted to remember that, at one time, she agreed for what she considered their sake. Now she knew the error of her ways. The kobolds could handle themselves, given proper care.

And so, Verist cleared her throat and asked Red, “Have you been practicing?”

The kobold mage nodded. “As much as I can traveling with the troops,” she confessed. Red was part of Shade's contingent of troops, a hybrid of kobolds and orcs that were making the most rapid progress through Avant. Grot's forces were making a huge mess, trying to draw the most attention, while Merdon's group were the largest force. Shade's were smaller and focused on striking key points that Karsan had plotted out for them. Red was their emergency plan, capable of getting their most important people out of the fray and bringing back reinforcements in the blink of an eye.

“Yes,” Verist hummed. “It's not a great place to train. Our talents need to be focused on other things, while we need to be ready to respond to hostile activities.” Energy couldn't be wasted on practice, yet the practice would be necessary for success at some point.

“I've gotten good with electricity and teleportation at least,” Red replied as she held up her claw and demonstrated. White lightning magnificently arced between her claws, lighting up the room further as the power coursed up and down her fingers. It put a smile on Verist's face.

“Keep going,” she encouraged the kobold. “Before long you'll be ready to move onto bigger things.”

Red put her arm down and asked, “Like that hellfire spell?” The one she had cast over a year ago, in that very room.

Verist's face fell and she looked at the walls of her tower. She remembered. “Where did you learn that?” she asked.

“There was a book,” Red told her. “I found it when I was living in my village. When I had a village. I didn't understand the words, even when I learned to read them. They didn't make sense.”

“A book of spells,” the human muttered. It also confirmed something for her. If any other kobold had read that passage aloud, nothing would have happened. Red had the potential for magic, for great magic if she concentrated. “Where did you get it?”

The red-scaled kobold shrugged. “Fell off a wagon or something. It was just in the forest where we lived and I found it. I learned how to read it over a few months and decided to ask our elder why it didn't make sense. When I read it out loud...” Her home burned, consumed by a fire that could only be stopped by holy rains or incapacitating the caster. Red had blacked out from the strain, but not before the fire ruined her home.

“You will be ready for such things one day,” Verist told her. “In truth, that you've cast that spell not once by accident, but once again on purpose, means you have a great potential, Red. But you must understand your limits, and the proper care of magic before you tackle anything greater than what you have now.”

“Or else I'll hurt myself,” she guessed, Verist confirming with a nod. “I understand,” the kobold mage agreed. “I've stepped beyond that line too many times already.” She didn't fully trust Verist, still, but she didn't feel like submerging the orcs' home in a conjured ocean by accident or destroying it with a never-ending tornado. Magic required her to act in a more contained manner, and so she would learn it. She would master control, her abilities, and then she could use it as she saw fit, without restraint. Then, the king of Avant would regret his life, and every choice he'd made that led up to his death at the fiery hands of an angry kobold.